Part 80 (1/2)
A very few moments and a very few words sufficed to explain to Harley the state of his old fellow-soldier's orphan. And Harley himself soon stood in the young sufferer's room, supporting her burning temples on his breast, and whispering into ears that heard him as in a happy dream, ”Comfort, comfort; your father yet lives in me.”
And then Helen, raising her eyes, said, ”But Leonard is my brother--more than brother-and he needs a father's care more than I do.”
”Hush, hush, Helen. I need no one, nothing now!” cried Leonard, and his tears gushed over the little hand that clasped his own.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Harley L'Estrange was a man whom all things that belong to the romantic and poetic side of our human life deeply impressed. When he came to learn the ties between these two Children of Nature, standing side by side, alone amidst the storms of fate, his heart was more deeply moved than it had been for many years. In those dreary attics, overshadowed by the smoke and reek of the humble suburb, the workday world in its harshest and tritest forms below and around them, he recognized that divine poem which comes out from all union between the mind and the heart. Here, on the rough deal table (the ink scarcely dry), lay the writings of the young wrestler for fame and bread; there, on the other side of the part.i.tion, on that mean pallet, lay the boy's sole comforter, the all that warmed his heart with living mortal affection.
On one side the wall, the world of imagination; on the other, this world of grief and of love. And in both, a spirit equally sublime,--unselfish devotion,--”the something afar from the sphere of our sorrow.”
He looked round the room into which he had followed Leonard, on quitting Helen's bedside. He noted the ma.n.u.scripts on the table, and pointing to them, said gently, ”And these are the labours by which you supported the soldier's orphan?--soldier yourself in a hard battle!”
”The battle was lost,--I could not support her,” replied Leonard, mournfully.
”But you did not desert her. When Pandora's box was opened, they say Hope lingered last--”
”False, false,” said Leonard; ”a heathen's notion. There are deities that linger behind Hope,--Grat.i.tude, Love, and Duty.”
”Yours is no common nature,” exclaimed Harley, admiringly, ”but I must sound it more deeply hereafter: at present I hasten for the physician; I shall return with him. We must move that poor child from this low close air as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let me qualify your rejection of the old fable. Wherever Grat.i.tude, Love, and Duty remain to man, believe me that Hope is there too, though she may be often invisible, hidden behind the sheltering wings of the n.o.bler deities.”
Harley said this with that wondrous smile of his, which cast a brightness over the whole room, and went away. Leonard stole softly towards the grimy window; and looking up towards the stars that shone pale over the roof-tops, he murmured, ”O Thou, the All-seeing and All-merciful! how it comforts me now to think that, though my dreams of knowledge may have sometimes obscured the heavens, I never doubted that Thou wert there! as luminous and everlasting, though behind the cloud!”
So, for a few minutes, he prayed silently, then pa.s.sed into Helen's room, and sat beside her motionless, for she slept. She woke just as Harley returned with a physician; and then Leonard, returning to his own room, saw amongst his papers the letter he had written to Mr. Dale, and muttering, ”I need not disgrace my calling,--I need not be the mendicant now”--held the letter to the flame of the candle. And while he said this, and as the burning tinder dropped on the floor, the sharp hunger, unfelt during his late anxious emotions, gnawed at his entrails. Still, even hunger could not reach that n.o.ble pride which had yielded to a sentiment n.o.bler than itself, and he smiled as he repeated, ”No mendicant!--the life that I was sworn to guard is saved. I can raise against Fate the front of Man once more.”
CHAPTER XIX.
A few days afterwards, and Helen, removed to a pure air, and under the advice of the first physicians, was out of all danger.
It was a pretty detached cottage, with its windows looking over the wild heaths of Norwood, to which Harley rode daily to watch the convalescence of his young charge: an object in life was already found. As she grew better and stronger, he coaxed her easily into talking, and listened to her with pleased surprise. The heart so infantine and the sense so womanly struck him much by its rare contrast and combination. Leonard, whom he had insisted on placing also in the cottage, had stayed there willingly till Helen's recovery was beyond question. Then he came to Lord L'Estrange, as the latter was about one day to leave the cottage, and said quietly, ”Now, my Lord, that Helen is safe, and now that she will need me no more, I can no longer be a pensioner on your bounty. I return to London.”
”You are my visitor, not my pensioner, foolish boy,” said Harley, who had already noticed the pride which spoke in that farewell; ”come into the garden and let us talk.”
Harley seated himself on a bench on the little lawn; Nero crouched at his feet; Leonard stood beside him.
”So,” said Lord L'Estrange, ”you would return to London? What to do?”
”Fulfil my fate.”
”And that?”
”I cannot guess. Fate is the Isis whose veil no mortal can ever raise.”
”You should be born for great things,” said Harley, abruptly. ”I am sure that you write well. I have seen that you study with pa.s.sion. Better than writing and better than study, you have a n.o.ble heart, and the proud desire of independence. Let me see your ma.n.u.scripts, or any copies of what you have already printed. Do not hesitate,--I ask but to be a reader. I don't pretend to be a patron: it is a word I hate.”
Leonard's eyes sparkled through their sudden moisture. He brought out his portfolio, placed it on the bench beside Harley, and then went softly to the farther part of the garden. Nero looked after him, and then rose and followed him slowly. The boy seated himself on the turf, and Nero rested his dull head on the loud heart of the poet.
Harley took up the various papers before him, and read them through leisurely. Certainly he was no critic. He was not accustomed to a.n.a.lyze what pleased or displeased him; but his perceptions were quick, and his taste exquisite. As he read, his countenance, always so genuinely expressive, exhibited now doubt and now admiration. He was soon struck by the contrast, in the boy's writings, between the pieces that sported with fancy and those that grappled with thought. In the first, the young poet seemed so unconscious of his own individuality. His imagination, afar and aloft from the scenes of his suffering, ran riot amidst a paradise of happy golden creations. But in the last, the THINKER stood out alone and mournful, questioning, in troubled sorrow, the hard world on which he gazed. All in the thought was unsettled, tumultuous; all in the fancy serene and peaceful. The genius seemed divided into twain shapes,--the one bathing its wings amidst the starry dews of heaven; the other wandering, ”melancholy, slow,” amidst desolate and boundless sands. Harley gently laid down the paper and mused a little while. Then he rose and walked to Leonard, gazing on his countenance as he neared the boy, with a new and a deeper interest.
”I have read your papers,” he said, ”and recognize in them two men, belonging to two worlds, essentially distinct.” Leonard started, and murmured, ”True, true!”